Selma, population
1,857, is an industrial town with two textile mills. The section north of the
Southern Rail tracks is known as Old Mr. Adkinson's Deer Park. Here a spring
attracted deer before the town was established. Near Mitchiner's Station, the
early name of the village, a detachment of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's
Confederates, retreating from Bentonville in March 1865, fought a rearguard
action.
SMITHFIELD
Smithfield,
population 2,543, seat of Johnston County, is a tobacco-market town on a bluff
above the Neuse River. The town's most cherished tradition is that in 1789 it
missed becoming the capital of North Carolina
by only one vote. The assembly in 1746 created the county and named it
for Gabriel Johnston, Governor under the Crown (1734-52), and also set up St.
Patrick's Parish of the Church of England, coextensive with the county. Founded
in 1770, Smithfield was named for Col. John Smith (1687-1777), an early settler
from Virginia who was a delegate to the Halifax convention and who owned the
land on which the town was built. In Colonial days the town was the head of
navigation on the Neuse.
MANCHESTER
Manchester,
population 49, once a turpentine shipping point on Lower Little River, is the
site of Holly Hill, now occupied by a story-and-a-half house. It was the
Murchison family seat from the days when Kenneth Murchison, a Revolutionary
soldier, erected his home in a magnificent grove of hollies.
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